


before the chance is gone

by smithens



Series: une quartette [2]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Bookstores, Canon Era, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 03:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10068056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Favourite follows Fantine into a bookshop, where she considers their positions.





	

Zéphine and Dahlia have run off ahead, Blachevelle and company linger behind, and young Fantine has entered a shop only to peer at its window display from the inside. It is warm enough, and sunny enough, to do the same from the cobblestones, but the girl is always peculiar.

And thus Favourite stands alone.

For a short, blissful moment, she is happy for it, too - then she notes the bawdy patrons of the café next door, wrings her gloved hands together, and ducks in after Fantine.

It is not a tailor’s shop, as she had assumed, but a secondhand bookstore. Before the window the seller has presented a full walking ensemble - one which surely must have cost more than the periodicals themselves do, but it serves its purpose of attracting patrons.

That is, if Fantine could be called a patron.

Favourite looks around, and if she is honest with herself she has a little awe at the way everything is arranged. The shelves are full, and each is detailed with a little inscription that says its subjects; behind the counter there are stacks of books yet to be priced and sorted.

She twirls her reticule between her fingers and stands out the way of the door, and the shopkeeper pays her no mind. In London she used to tuck in the corners of these shops while her student-of-the-day bartered over legal texts, political memoirs. It was not the magazines of the latest morning dresses which interested her, but the travel journals: what places might she go, if she could?

In Paris she is worldly, but she has not seen the world.

And Fantine, of course, is looking at the dresses.

Without speaking, Favourite approaches from behind her: upon the inside of the display is a journal from several years prior, showing sheer gowns with puckered sleeves and beautiful embroidery at the hems. Along the edges of the pages are little inscriptions discussing choices of fabric, trends in millinery. If Favourite squints she can make out a few words: they are in English, in fact, but Fantine cannot read anyway.

“Those are quite out of fashion, and foreign, too,” says Favourite into her ear.

Fantine, naïve Fantine, flinches.

“I think they are splendid,” she breathes, and Favourite does not miss the way she shifts her weight from side to side. Discomforted, but unwilling to say. “But, one might wish to wear a redingote.”

“Do you suppose so?”

Favourite touches Fantine’s shoulder. Her arms are hidden by long sleeves, her neck by a ruffled collar. Fantine dons her canezou even in summer.

Is she so modest before everyone, Favourite wonders. It is a question she and Dahlia have tittered over late into the night, when the men are absent and Zéphine off on her jaunts. Lately, too, Fantine has been hiding something.

“Even in the drawing, I can see… why, everything.”

“Oh?”

Fantine shrugs off her touch and steps aside, head bowed. Golden curls show beneath the back of her bonnet.

“Tholomyès and his friends will be caught up, soon. They wouldn’t like to let us wait for so long,” she says, a little more confidently, and then Fantine is through the door, her attitudes and airs with her.

Favourite looks at the fashion plates on the stand before her, then turns around to survey the shelves. _Les voyages_ , a little plaque reads. Her heart aches. Outside, Fantine is clutching the lapels of Tholomyès’s coat, smiling so wide her pearly, even teeth shine - she knows nothing, and yet she is happy.

With a sigh, Favourite follows.

**Author's Note:**

> title from The Fantasticks.


End file.
